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My Kingdom For a Beer

Greetings to all of our favorite people, and your friends and friends of friends.

Bryan and I are throwing open the garage door and inviting you in for beer tasting, socializing and snacking on a few of Matt’s paninis. We will be serving some Black IPA’s, Crazy Ivan (Imperial Red Ale), something that tastes an awful lot like a German Lager, Hibiscus Saison and an experimental Hibiscus IPA. I guess I am going through a Hibiscus phase, like Picasso’s Blue Period.

Anyway, please join us this Thursday at 214 Clara Street around 7 PM. The beer will go fast! Bryan will brewing something great and dropping brewing knowledge. We are looking forward to seeing all of you out and raising a glass to your health.

Ok so Bryan and I had no idea that Thursday was Cinco de Mayo, really we had no idea. But friends and colleagues informed us that brew night fell upon this hallowed day and that this was awesome. So friends, friends of friends and complete strangers, we are throwing open our doors and inviting you to come and taste our tasty beverages that we have been working away upon over the last few weeks. We have reds, we have blacks and some other new creations for you to sample. We will have a mystery guest tap for a little later in the evening.

Also we have roped in our great friends at Le Truc to come and park right across the street from us on Thursday and serve their incredible, original and delectable food. We have worked with these guys on three separate occasions and been blown away each time.

We will be opening doors at 7pm at 214 Clara Street for Pacific Brewing Laboratories Thursday night beer social. Bryan and I hope that you can join us for this “special” holiday, grab a great hand crafted beer and some amazing food. We look forward to seeing you all.

We are hosting our bi-weekly (or is it bi-monthly, I always get that one confused) Thursday Night Beer Social at 214 Clara Street starting at 7 PM. Bryan and I will be brewing up a Double IPA and having a few few treats on tap. Matt the Panini Guy will be there serving up: braised painted hill beef with smoked marinara, Calabrian chile paste and provolone. So come on out and have a snack and a beer cause what else are you gonna be do’in on a Thursday Night.

Below is an interesting article about the purchase of Goose Island by InBev. I would like to hear your thoughts on “is this selling out” or a smart business move to get more craft beer to more people. And just because InBev owns you does that mean that flavor and uniqueness will be compromised? Let the discussion begin.

It’s not like this should come as a real shocker. Goose Island has been partnered with the Craft Brewers Alliance for several years now, with the majority shareholder of that company being Anheuser-Busch. Only now, it’s 100% — Goose’s founders and investors will get around $23 million for their 58% stake and the remaining 42% owned by CBA will be acquired for $16 million.

On the positive side, Budweiser dollars mean that Goose Island will now be able to bring its brews to the palates of more beer lovers around the country. But what has most people concerned is the departure of head brewmaster Greg Hall. With the main man heading for an advisory role, what does this mean for the flavor Goose Island’s beers? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

We are opening the doors to the brewery this Thursday, March 24th from 7-10pm to all our friends. We will be serving an IPA and Hibiscus Saison and brewing something that I need to come up with before Thursday. So come join us at 214 Clara Street and taste our audacious brews. We will have the panini guy serving up your favorite grilled sandwich. See you there.

All professional brewers can trace their roots back to a common hobby — homebrewing. We know what you’re thinking: All homebrewers are sweaty dudes with beards. Au contraire. As the DIY foodie movement swelled over the last year, urban homebrewing culture has been widely embraced. Case in point: For this year’s White House Super Bowl Party, President Barack Obama requested a homebrewed honey ale from his chef. Homebrewing, however, doesn’t require any special skillset beyond an arm for stirring, a curious relationship with yeast, and a sixth-grade reading level. The hobby is more about creativity and passion than about scientific knowledge, and numerous underground Bay Area operations have opened their doors to prove that Joe and Jill Sixpack can make great beer and even turn their passion into a profession.Two trends last year provided a window into the birth of a craft brewery: nanobrewing and Gypsy brewing. A nanobrewery is essentially a smaller version of a microbrewery. These grassroots operations produce beer in small batches, often on systems that resemble advanced homebrewing setups. Think of them as the farm league of craft brewing.Luckily for us, many nanobreweries hold open houses to showcase their products, get feedback, and generate buzz (while giving you a buzz). Federal licensing and taxation does not distinguish between nanobreweries and microbreweries, so many unlicensed nanos give away their brews or accept donations while they test the waters.

Perhaps the best-known San Francisco nanobrewery is Noe Valley’s Elizabeth Street Brewing (798 Elizabeth at Douglass, 244-5496,www.elizabethstreetbrewery.com). The neighborhood fixture is run out of a Noe Valley home that was featured on the home renovation TV show While You Were Out (and naturally remodeled as a “brewpub in planning”). In addition to acting as a testing ground and incubator for the impending licensed business, the nanobrewery serves to build bridges within the local craft brewing community.

Elizabeth Street’s appropriately named Richard Brewer-Hay was invited to create a collaborative brew with established San Francisco Brewers Guild member 21st Amendment Brewing (563 Second St. at Bryant), 369-0900, www.21st-amendment.com). Their Imperial Jack was featured during 21A and Magnolia Brewpub’s annual Strong Beer Month, and was awarded a gold medal at the 2010 World Beer Cup. Not too shabby for a brewer who hasn’t even quit his day job.Another nanobrewery on the rise is SOMA’s Pacific Brewing Laboratories (214 Clara at Fifth St., www.pacbrewlab.blogspot.com). Open to the public every other Thursday, the brewery feels like a speakeasy run by a high school science teacher. If you’re excited by beakers and tubing, this may be your happy place. Mad scientists Bryan Hermannsson and Patrick M. Horn brew small batches and share the fruits of their labor with interested friends and strangers who are welcome to subsidize the brewing habit via donation. They recently poured their IPA, Squid Ink Black IPA, and Hibiscus Saison at the Bay Area’s first Nanobrewery Festival during S.F. Beer Week. The festival also showcased Elizabeth Street Brewery and seven other “breweries of tomorrow.”

While the term “Gypsy brewing” might conjure images of Jack Sparrow hunched over a kettle, the name is derived from these brewers’ nomadic tendencies. They take the traditional business start-up model and flip it on its head by renting equipment and time on established brewery systems instead of raising capital to create their own facilities. This isn’t as easy as waltzing into Sierra Nevada and asking the staff to make a beer with your name on it. Gypsy brewers craft the recipes and sweat over the brew pot, just like any other brewers. The upside of this model is fewer sunk costs and more batch-to-batch creative flexibility.

Two local breweries taking this approach are Almanac Beer Co. and Highwater Brewing, both operating out of Drake’s Brewing Company in San Leandro. Almanac, the brainchild of Damian Fagan and Jesse Friedman (of Beer & Nosh), release seasonal brews that are firmly rooted in the Bay Area’s rich farming and culinary traditions. The duo’s first beer, a Belgian-style golden ale aged in red wine barrels with local blackberries, previewed at S.F. Beer Week events to widespread praise. Steve Altimari, previously of Valley Brewing, is helming the Highwater Brewing operation. Altimari, whose beers regularly garner praise on a local and national level, released the first batches of his excellent IPA and Double IPA during Beer Week as well. Both breweries were represented at another inaugural beer week event, the Gypsy Beers from Near and Far festival at the Alembic.

Be sure to check out these nano and Gypsy brewers as their products become readily available — then gloat when you find yourself saying that you knew them before they were big shots.

It is that time again when Bryan and I open up the doors and invite the good folk of SF into our home away from home. So please come on by this Thursday from 7-10 at 214 Clara Street and taste some of our new creations and watch as we brew something fun. We will have the panini guy there making some great “Italian” sandwiches. We hope that you all can make it out.

Beer week is over.(sad) But it went great for us. We got to see a lot of friends, met some new ones and share our beers. Now we have lots of left overs and want to share them with you. So Please join us tomorrow at 214 Clara St. starting around 7 and ending at 10 pm. We will have the panini guy there again if you get hungry. We hope that you can make it out.